"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

has devoted himself to this object with great intelligence and no less great
determination, and done us all, and science, a service for which we cannot
be too grateful.

It was necessary for him to secure the co-operation of successful
scientific writers and induce them to say what they had to say in a form as
far as possible intelligible to non-specialists. He has often told me of the
fights he had in pursuing this object, the difficulties of which he once
described to me in the following riddle: Question : What is a scientific
author? Answer: A cross between a mimosa and a porcupine.* Berliner's
achievement would have been impossible but for the peculiar intensity of his
longing for a clear, comprehensive view of the largest possible area of
scientific country. This feeling also drove him to produce a text-book of
physics, the fruit of many years of strenuous work, of which a medical
student said to me the other day: "I don't know how I should ever have got a
clear idea of the principles of modern physics in the time at my disposal
without this book."

Berliner's fight for clarity and comprehensiveness of outlook has done
a great deal to bring the problems, methods, and results of science home to
many people's minds. The scientific life of our time is simply inconceivable
vzthout his paper. It is just as important to make knowledge live and to
keep it alive as to solve specific problems. We are all conscious of what we
owe to Arnold Berliner.

*Do not be angry with me for this indiscretion, my dear Berliner. A
serious-minded man enjoys a good laugh now and then.

Popper-Lynhaus was more than a brilliant engineer and writer. He was
one of the few outstanding personalities who embody the conscience of a
generation. He has drummed it into us that society is responsible for the
fate of every individual and shown us a way to translate the consequent
obligation of the community into fact. The community or State was no fetish
to him; he based its right to demand sacrifices of the individual entirely
on its duty to give the individual personality a chance of harmonious
development.


Obituary of the Surgeon, M. Katzenstein

During the eighteen years I spent in Berlin I had few close friends,
and the closest was Professor Katzenstein. For more than ten years I spent
my leisure hours during the summer months with him, mostly on his delightful
yacht. There we confided our experiences, ambitions, emotions to each other.
We both felt that this friendship was not only a blessing because each
understood the other, was enriched by him, and found ins him that responsive
echo so essential to anybody who is truly alive; it also helped to make both
of us more independent of external experience, to objectivize it more
easily.